For the past year, peace groups all over the world have been working on ways to mark the 50thanniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But now that the 50-year point

The Hawara Checkpoint

has been reached, we are greeted with some big news that few are talking about: There is no occupation.

No one has made such a declaration, of course, but the conclusion is inescapable. In all the relevant international law stemming from the 1907 Hague Conventions and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which govern belligerent military occupation, are based on the presumption that the condition is temporary.

A recent paper issued by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) concludes “An unlawfully prolonged occupation arises when an occupying state seeks to permanently transform the international status, government or demographic character of a foreign territory, including through de jure or de facto annexation.” Their legal arguments are well worth reading and quite conclusive. Trying to summarize the details here would do them an injustice. Read more at LobeLog

Fifty years have passed since Israel’s stunning military victory over the countries surrounding it in 1967. War transforms countries, regions, the entire planet as no other event can. And perhaps no war ever transformed a country and the entire region surrounding it as suddenly and as dramatically as the 1967 war did to Israel, the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the entire Middle East.

Consider where the region was on June 4, 1967. The Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing in the region, with the US enjoying an advantage, but still concerned with Soviet influence. Egypt, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a leader in both the global Non-Aligned Movement—which purported to resist the influence of either of the superpowers—and the rapidly declining Pan-Arab movement. Syria was already fighting with Israel. Its government in a state of flux that would not resolve itself until several years later, Syria was already the Soviet Union’s strongest ally in the region. Disunity among Arab governments in general was rampant, with uneasy relationships thwarting several attempts at alliances among different sets of countries. Read more at LobeLog

This week’s Souciant article is up. In it, I look at the bigotry of the Zionism of Eli Yishai, its prominent role in Israel and Zionism not only today but historically, and how Jewish self-determination could exist without both that hate and the obsession with an artificially created and enforced “Jewish majority.”

In the final installment of my series marking 45 years since the 1967 War and the beginning of the occupation, I look at the huge role that war played in the development of the “special relationship” between the US and Israel. The relationship has obviously been a disaster for the cause of peace and for the Palestinians, but has it really been good for Israel and the US?

In this week’s column at Souciant you can see the second entry in my series on the causes and effects of the 1967 war and beginning of the occupation, as we near the 45th anniversary of those events. In this piece, I look as well at the recent race riots in south Tel Aviv and how the xenophobia of the rioters and, perhaps more importantly, the political leaders who inspire that hate, is connected to a culture of occupation.

As the likelihood of an attack on Iran continues to diminish, and on the 45th anniversary of Egypt’s closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli traffic, I use my weekly column at Souciant to look at some parallels and differences between the lead-up to the 1967 war and the current situation with Iran. It’s a history we need to remember, even re-learn, lest history repeat itself with consequences that, as we’ve seen with the ’67 war, can evolve over decades into things we can’t imagine at the time.

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